Diagnostics start-up Healthians plans expansion into South.

Healthians, a diagnostics start-up is planning expansion into southern India with a planned outlay of Rs. 50 crore.

The start-up, which began operations in 2015 and backed by cricketer Yuvraj Singh’s investment venture YouWeCan and Asuka Holdings amongst others, has launched its first pathology lab in Bengaluru, as part of the expansion plan.

Deepak Sahni, founder and CEO of Healthians, told BusinessLine that the company would make this investment over the next 3 years.

The startup’s business model centres around taking up standalone pathology labs. Healthians plans to take up 12 labs under management in the next few years. As of now, the startup collects around 3,000 tests every day and has completed 10 million tests. Healthians has witnessed growth in the past year in north India, and now feels that iyt is ready to expand across India.

“Unlike traditional business, we don’t want to dominate just one single market and clearly see the demand from all parts of India,” said Sahni.

Healthians competes with the likes of Thyrocare and Dr Lal Pathlabs, two listed companies, and non-listed companies such as SRL Diagnostics. According to an Edelweiss analyst Deepak Malik, in fiscal 2018, the domestic diagnostic industry grew 13 per cent on a yearly basis, despite a challenging business environment as a result of GST, intensification of competition in certain pathology and imaging business segments, and after-effects of demonetization, which put prices under pressure. Among the players, Thyrocare grew 15 per cent, whereas SRL and Medall grew by a high single digit.

Growth in Indian market for the healthcare start-up so far has been good. While the commpany does not disclose the financials as it is private, it revealed that it operates in 21 cities including Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Dehradun Jaipur, Chandigarh, Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Amritsar, Sonipat, Meerut, Panipat, Ambala, Karnal, Mohali and Panchkula.